Paul Hallenbeck of Neotropix spoke about a promising new treatment for neuroendocrine cancers. Initial trials of the “Seneca Valley Virus” were conducted on patients with carcinoid cancer or small cell lung cancer (SCLC) that had failed to respond to standard therapies. Results were very good; they plan to start a phase 2b trial in a couple of months.

Adela Ben-Yakar talked about using lasers for the precise surgical removal of tumours. They are developing a femtosecond laser system that can both image and target individual cancer cells – a nice overview of this work has been published in Technology Review.

Cassian Yee spoke about treating cancer with adoptive T cell therapy. Briefly, it’s a personalized approach to cancer research that attacks tumours using the patient’s own T cells. T cells are extracted, modified in a number of different ways to improve their function, grown into a much larger population, and then finally re-infused back into the patient.